


Revenge Fantasy

by estike



Category: Elisabeth - Levay/Kunze, Elisabeth - Takarazuka Revue
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estike/pseuds/estike
Summary: Trapped in the same story without as much as a reward, the one that narrates shall explore the darkness that is all around in a grand revenge fantasy.
Relationships: Elisabeth & Lucheni, Luigi Lucheni & Der Tod | Death (Elisabeth)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	1. On All Accounts

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Tsukishiro Kanato's _Café Break_ interview, where she revealed that based on _Kitsch_, she believes Sisi must be Lucheni's favourite girl, after all. 
> 
> Strictly based on the 2018 Tsukigumi version only, tried to ignore anything historical as much as possible to avoid accidentally calling the wrath of any dead historical figures on myself.

**On All Accounts**

On all accounts, if one is a bad man, he should bask in his wickedness until the moment in which divine punishment finds him in Death and he should suffer through thousands of eternities. If one is a rotten man, he shall rot with pride, out in the open, gloating and satisfied.

And if you, magnificent creature of the underworld, Your Excellency, decide to turn to the rot, when you want him to do your dirty work, well then, you should also expect none the less but a wicked welcome, a job dreadfully done.

Some of us, even bad men, the most wicked of them all, are scared of the inevitable. 

And those who are not shall be feared by the inevitable instead. For he, who fears not, conquers. And even if he does not conquer, he never minded perishing instead. 

One cannot help getting what he deserves. And still, and so, he also won’t think that one can sit on his arse for eternity at the gates of hell, content with the half-measures some may call punishment, an endless circle of a lifelong trip back into where history began then ended by his own sun-kissed little hands.

A guilt trip, if you will. 

You do not have someone play _ mors ex machina _ then forget about tipping them for a job well done. Love may be love but Your Excellency should never forget that bad men do not love the same way as good ones.

Perhaps, bad and good are only separated by the extent to which we feel entitled to our own rewards. Deny a good man what he was due and watch him turn docile with love, with his head bowed to the inner workings of fate. Deny the same from a bad man and watch him turn resentful with love, fired by the flames of revenge.

You see, when you call on a man who loves love the way he does, to assist in your _ grande amore _, then leave only him and his hands on the final night, without even a cold welcome at the gates of the hell he will not be allowed to step into for an eternity, you should at least expect to hear the echoes of his resentful heart.

Expect those screams to sweep under your decaying skin, and show Your Excellency that earthly vices should be taken with earthly cautions, for once you cross the border, nothing saves you from the whims of humanity, disgusting to the very core, full of envy and resentment.

You know it is never elegant. That is not the way of humans. 

It takes a few replays to realize that there is nothing but everything behind the crimson veils: that he has an endless supply of the lifetime of an Empress at his hands, and barely any rules. And so, even if by the handiwork of some odd reactions in the brain, suffocating in a cell deprived of sunlight, should Your Excellency be there in any shape or form bordering on pure fantasy: That is more than enough to take revenge.

For between the time these curtains rise and fall again, you’re at the mercy of a bad, bad man.

**A Rat is a Rat**

If you are a nameless, faceless member of the public, without a single deed to mark your good future, you are also fateless. You walk among the lines of history invisibly, knowing that nobody will ask for as much as your name. The body you are warming with your undead soul is the same body mortals tire out in mere fifty years, just as handsome, just as foul. 

But a rat is a rat, even if he walks in your home unnoticed and invisible, wreaking havoc, rubbing off disease in every direction he crawls. And when a rat knows he is a rat, he is not ashamed of acting like one. There are only so many things Lucheni is ashamed of acting like, he is yet to find one. When you embrace the disgusting nature of humanity, the insane amount of possibilities tend to make you drunk on infinity. And when you accept that no matter what, the curtains will rise again, come tomorrow, your mind begins to rebel against that _ grande amore _ you promised yourself.

In a world of an endless number of crimson veils, why should not there be endless possibilities? Is there a beaten path, or are we simply too lazy to play with anything that we consider new and alien?

A rat is a rat, a man is a man, love is love, and revenge is revenge.

His Excellency is all glitter behind the scenes as well, albeit he is more used to keeping hounds than puppy dogs who would run to his feet for a treat every moment they went through with a bad deed. His hair is green with jealousy and purple with the arcane. 

Love is a poison that tastes different on each tongue: on His Excellency's it tasted like despair and wrath, on his own, it tasted like destruction. And that wrath and despair was so delightful to see. Almost charming. Almost undignified. It was a blast! Every single little failure felt like falling in love over and over again. 

Learning the rules is the first step to knowing how to break them, and so in that manner, if one does not do their homework well, they miss the full extent to which they can become a bad man. A thousand curtains, a thousand lessons, a thousand rejections. 

One perfect revenge. 

If His Excellency does not want him, there may be someone else. 

There will be someone else.

There is the Inevitable we are all scared of, and then also, admittedly a lot more dangerous, there is the Storyteller. 

**Curtain One**

Curtain one, rule one. If you want to get your hands on something, you shall not shy away from pretending to be exactly what they want you to be. Falsities are rewarded. Showing your true colours can come later. 

Be yourself and your prize will lay a thousand veils away, dancing on the sharp edge of a lone file. But in revenge: Be what they want you to be and conquer. 

He remains hidden behind the shadows for a while because even most bad men do not have a taste for a young girl-child, although Death does not discriminate. 

Death perhaps sees behind the matters of the flesh but Lucheni cannot say the same. Flesh is flesh, when he looks at His Excellency, it is the illusion of his flesh that stirs desire first, and secondly, the cruel nature of all that is beyond the realm of humans. 

In a way, he came to think that Elisabeth and he were the same: sick of all that which was human nature, misanthropes 'til the end, seeking something that lay beyond imagination and perception. Talk about mirrors. 

His Excellency never fails to fall each time, but he appears and disappears only at designated times, bound by the ropes of a story told by another. The world is largely unsupervised by the unearthly forces, although Death is all around us. 

**A Peel of Orange**

When every summer of 1854 is unprecedentedly hot, it feels like a sham to repeat it over and over again. Sure, sticky sweat is streaming down his undead neck, tickling his back as he rolls the heavy suitcases on, but after the fourth curtain it is not unprecedented, not surprising. It is a fact. 

Then, he supposes, most men born in the 70s never get to say they have experienced the scorching summer heat of this year, not even once. Lest for an eternity. 

The suitcases roll on. Elisabeth steers from her family. Even the moving air is hot, licking exposed skin as if it was the winds of retribution in hell. 

She is as childish as any of your fifteen-year-olds would be, vexed from the hot summer air and an undesired journey. It is but a short while on foot until the resort, but long enough to drive any reluctant ones into madness. Sometimes less is more, and a sympathetic smile goes for miles. Small interludes, heavy skirts, a family dispute.

Oh, he knows this already.

He stops to watch over the madness, idly fanning his undead flesh with his undead hat.

“Mister… Lend me some air.” She waves her own hands about herself but so much will never cool her down. “Lend me your hat. It is so hot I wish I could just perish.”

Lucheni smirks. He knows a man, more so an entity too proud to be called either a man or a woman, who aches to hear these words, slipping out of her mouth so carelessly. Perhaps if His Excellency spent more time up here, in the hub of it all, he would not need to mope at the bottom of hell when the whole world is scared to ask for a kiss.

“If only we had splendid allies in this world who would end it all when we had enough…” he agrees, turning his hat towards the girl. Fanning.

“How would you prefer they did it?” In her voice there is something beyond simple curiosity, something beckoning forces nobody should be playing with.

Although, what is there left to say for him: he’s been playing with them all the same.

“Swift, or slow? I’d like to choke.” Would he like to, or is that all he knows?

Her smile widens, as though they were talking about light topics next to a cup of steaming tea. This is their frivolous entertainment. “Don’t you mind the pain? Or do you need it to remind you of the fact that you are dead? People say that those peacefully passing away in their beds while asleep remain in this world as ghosts, wandering about for an eternity.”

“I wonder. What about you?”

Her mother cries for her, “Sisi!” She does not listen.

“Sisi,” he beckons her too, mimicking her, but it is less fun the moment her mother finds them. From two strangers who delightfully discuss their preferences in Death, they separate from each other as lovers caught in the act.

“Goodbye!” she giggles, fluttering away in her blue dress as a butterfly.

Is it not the fault in one’s character that he cannot romance a soul who is so fixated on the idea of Death? If one cannot play the heartstrings of humans, he should not feel entitled to the gift of a woman’s embrace. If he cannot take it one way or another, what is he worth?

Revenge, much like oranges, can taste just as bitter, as sweet, as sour. It can be taken and stolen, but it is best when it is cheated out: bestowed upon you by the illusion of free will. 

He smacks the governess on the arse and thieves some fruit on the way. Life after Death really isn’t that bad.

He edges closer to her lonely figure, abandoned by her father and purposefully ignoring her sister. Although he is designed to be invisible, his approach catches her eye and she rewards him with a slanted smile.

“Bored,” she mouths.

Lucheni waves the orange her way, but before she could reach for it, it’s gone, rolling down the grass. She bares her teeth, he laughs. The girl darts after that orange as if that was the only happiness she would ever get in her life, satisfied to no end when she finally holds it in both palms.

The fatal flaw of Death is that Death is never subtle, Death is full of greed and while it may present as a gaudy gateway for those who possess a desire for such, in the most crucial moments, it will not be what you want it to be. Death, natural to this world, and yet, so out of it, can con you until your last breath, but not any longer.

Elisabeth peels the orange with a self-indulgent smile, a quick, simple, sad distraction. Calculating with the future in mind, he withdraws without another word, simply wearing a lingering smile.

**Unbent Albeit Broke** **n**

What else is Death? Premature. Always rushing to meet your sorry end, hungry and desperate. It is human nature to be repelled by desperation and eagerness, to hide from the eyes that seek you out even in the depths of the darkness, chasing you down. 

Death has always had trouble seducing the stubborn and strong-willed, for they are hard to bend. The problem with those who refuse to bend with rules, will, time, and change: is that sooner or later, they will be broken instead. 

The trick, is eternity. Eternity sharpens even the dullest minds, for there is an unwritten rule which says that time, slowly as it is, has the power to change anything. There is no consciousness in the world that remains stagnant with time, be the change for better or for worse. No mind lives an eternity unaware: curtains are pulled apart by a strange force every morning and evening, but sooner or later, you will pull back. 

There is a world filled with wicked wisdom, if only you open your eyes to see. People around you, mechanical or otherwise, teach a hundred lessons before they fade back into obscurity. 

Some will not be bent by force. But it is the rule of the world that all shall be bent. 

As a rat, he learned many a trick for His Excellency before, none of which worked wonders. As a human, he learned many a trick for himself, for embellished revenge. 

All that believe they cannot become a victim of manipulation are a thousandfold more vulnerable to it. Pay no mind to the possibility and find yourself compromised. All men can be manipulated, you only need to know which strings to pull.

Death operates on fear but that is just one intricate way among the endless roads one can take before claiming victory. Two things will make humans do whatever you please without mistake, and none of those is fear.

One. Make them believe they are the most unique creatures in the world, unparalleled and essential. Watch them answer with devotion, hungry for worship. 

Two. Make them believe they are one among many, with features getting lost among the crowds, tired, and unoriginal. Watch them scramble to prove you wrong. 

So few learned to leave their pride behind.

**Secret World**

He meets her when the afternoon bleeds into the dusk, with the winds still hot but the sky turning a sleepy grey above. No peels of oranges are around, only a puff of blue skirt swaying about in the gardens, hiding from sight.

When you want something you must crawl out of your skin and pretend to be somebody else. Death is unable to be unauthentic to itself, as the essence of Death is while natural, not human. Only humans can be so cruel as to deny even themselves in hopes of great returns. You may call Death false, phantasmagoric, deceitful, but all Death can be is the mirror to the deepest desires in your heart you may even hide from yourself under the veils of indifference.

Take a human, however.

She is trying to find a spot where eyes wouldn't be on her anymore, even if only for a second. For such a timid being who always keeps to herself to be followed and celebrated her whole life, ironic to the least. Perhaps if she basked in the attention, people would have turned away from her just as quickly as they found her. 

They see each other. In the name of playing it safe, and with more tact than your average Lord of Hades, he makes no approach. When you have eternity playing on repeat, you learn that there is no such thing as rush. He bows his head. She smiles, and he walks away.

Company finds him later, already off the beaten path. 

"One cannot say no, just as much as she cannot say yes," she thinks as she climbs onto the bench. "A moment you have all sorts of freedoms and the next you find yourself in a completely unfamiliar world. No matter what you say, it will never be the same."

We often forget the value of silence, and that the human brain is so brilliant, it would fill that silence in any way, with whatever intricate thoughts it wants to see in another's head. Some games are best played without words, and Lucheni opts to listen as he carefully adjusts the depths of his revenge. 

"If there were a secret world somewhere beyond the knowledge of our peers, I would wish to live in that world, undisturbed."

All long for a secret world but only some of us are allowed to live there. And once you meet the secret world you sought; you may find yourself wanting to go home. Only a few feel relief once entering this secret world they have been dreaming of, as it proves to be nothing but the extension of their own solitude and fears they were made to suffer from. It is always the most misanthropic who deep inside crave a mighty love. 

He’s hot, fast, and he craves the cool passion of the nonchalant and glass-skinned. A fire often swallows another and reduces all to ash, but have you seen anything more beautiful than the flames licking the surface of the ice, playful and adventurous. It is in that manner that he seeks the delight one gets from a cold refusal. The cold passion is the hardest to earn, and the one to give the most satisfaction.

The grey evening turns a deep blue around them, fragrant of the night.

“If I go back now,” she motions towards the estate with her head, “before I know it, another day will start.”

“In a way, this is your secret world.”

She shrugs and claims there is not so much about a secret world that pushes you out of its borders as it pleases, there’s not so much about a secret world when you’re constantly worried about the hour and the minute, wishing so desperately that you could stay another hour. Those places evoke nothing in you but a sort of longing you will never be able to satisfy, for the world created you to be a solitary being.

For a moment, she isn’t a child.

Then, in the next, she asks. “Then, what was your answer _ really _, mister?”

“My answer?”

“Isn’t suffocation a bit too boring, too?”

There is hardly anything to think about. “I suppose I would have died a martyr, but I didn’t have the range.”

He laughs until the muscles on his face feel tired, but she does not get frightened.

**The World is a Palindrome**

The world is a palindrome, same backwards as forwards. Doesn’t matter where you start from, history will spell the same letters in the end. Above, or below, the world is a palindrome, and so beware, because unless you understand this very simple truth, the waves of history will turn you under and swallow you whole. 

Another rule of the world and of the stage: Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Where a kiss used to be, another kiss needs to be plugged. Where one love was stolen from, another should bloom. These rules equip and build.

She joins him in the dusk the day after, and the next.

Every time, she smiles but does not wave. She runs after oranges to peel, while Lucheni smacks her governess on the arse, over and over again. These evenings, the moon reflects different sunlight.

“Alarming, isn’t it,” Lucheni thinks.

“Alarming,” she echoes. “Alarming how what is the dream of dreams for one is nothing more than a cage for the other. Wrong dream.” 

“But a dream, it is.” He is snickering to himself for a while, index finger between teeth. “It will not stop now.”

“A dream that will not stop for anyone now,” she echoes. “In some nightmares, I am all alone. In others, they never let me be, and yet, I am all the more alone.” 

“Are you bewildered?”

She shakes her whole body as a response, turning into a young girl once again. Her curls bounce all around her. “No! Inconvenienced.” 

“The dream world is out of your control?” 

She tilts her head to think, then says. “One can learn how to control dreams but it may take too much of trial and error. From a dream, you can wake up, but there is no waking up from real life.”

“Perhaps in Death you could be awakened to a different tomorrow.” 

A giggle. “Have you ever died, Mister, that you know so well what you are yearning for?”

“I haven’t had the privilege. Some of us have this annoying habit of yearning for the unknown, pretending that it may have something more to bring.” 

The smile melts away from her face in less than a second. She may remember that soon enough a question impossible to refuse will be posed to her, and with that, she rightly suspects to lose all that once used to belong to her. 

Freedom and love alike. Even the spark in her eyes. 

“The unknown isn’t always full of hope. Soon I may walk into a trap without even noticing it, and never walk out of it the same.”

His arm brushes against her as they sit beside each other. “You do not have to walk into the unknown. There is still time to do your research.”

**On the Wrong Terms**

All those who are slightly bad and ever wanted something will know that the way of getting that something shall never happen by asking. There are many intricate ways for the wicked to lead others into making decisions that serve them, all while they believe they are acting on their free will. 

A thought needs to be planted here in order to harvest it there. It is not so complicated, yet may escape a few lords of the underworld. He is too genuine, even in his schemings. 

One cannot know how to be a good wife, wise mother until the title finds her. One cannot know what is it like to be an Empress, no matter how thoroughly she prepared (or how she never prepared at all), until the moment she becomes one. 

Lucheni planted some thoughts in her head, and she, poor soul, bright as she is: began to think. Thoughts led her back to him, in the same hot summer dusk, under a different moon. He peels an orange for her. 

“I think Helene is relieved,” she chatters, although behind the chatter there is the inevitable. “She must know that whatever is coming now, is not coming for her anymore. No matter how much she practiced, anyone would be delighted never having to use that knowledge.” 

Later, she continues. “But one cannot do research anymore. How can one even fall in love with someone who’s called an emperor? That is where it all begins.” 

“Why, he is handsome enough,” Lucheni teases, but all he gets is a grimace in response. 

She would normally laugh but this evening she is full of despair, knowing that the moment of truth is making its approach. Earlier, she blabbered about how vexing it was, to wait for something that you knew was bound to happen, but had no taste for. 

“You may not be able to stop the inevitable, but you can always meet it in your terms.” 

“My terms?” She lifts her chin up. 

“One way to fight the inevitable, is finding it before it finds you. You may not be able to stop the passing of time, but you can go ahead and take control of how it finds you. You can be vulnerable to the whims of fate, or you can arm yourself.”

The evening brings on the insects whispering around them, at times calming, at times bringing them on the edge. It is later than how long she’d normally stay for, but her governess is not looking for her anymore. Everyone is busy inside with the quiet type of restlessness, growing despair and anxiety, the garden around them is motionless. 

“What do you think will happen? And how can you make it yours?” Lucheni asks. 

She thinks about it for a while. “Soon, he will have to kiss me, because time is running out,” she decides then. 

“Will you kiss him first, then? On your terms?”

The girl shakes her head. One cannot just. “Although one may not want their first kiss to happen with such an important person. So many things can go wrong.”

He grins. “How do you imagine it happening, then?”

“For research.” 

Fluttering close, like a butterfly, she presses her lips on his. Then she is taken by the fortitude of the answer that meets her right there, victorious. Hands on her waist, enveloped by the darkness and calling on the wrath of a thousand characters. Perhaps even the veils began to shiver in outrage, as the inevitable is turned upside down. He presses his nose against hers.

“Better?” 

**The Beauty of the Unrequited **

Human is foolish enough to see beauty in all that is lost and unreclaimed. He always longs for the kiss he knows he cannot kiss, savours that one unrequited love for as long as he is alive, and misses the most delicious opportunities while mourning those he never had a chance with.

He is the same. In a way. In love with absence.

What is more beautiful than the heartbreak of the heartless? The despair of the calm and collected? Show him something that is fragrant of irony and he will fall in love a thousand times over, and he will devote himself to the very same irony, milking it while it lasts. 

Only the coldest voices have the power to melt a heart. Threats that yearn to be fulfilled. The beauty of violence, even in the coolest of tones. The promises of torture, and the frivolous declarations of hate and animosity. Is there anything that could make a heart yearn more than refusal? 

He is ready to be hurt. Perhaps actively looks to being squeezed: by the arm, or even better, by the neck. But only piercing looks come his way. A question, or two.

“I did not know you were watching,” Lucheni lies, a wide grin spreading over his face. 

He thinks the dimple may make it better, it may make someone want to lose his temper and just strangle him for once and all. 

“I happened to.”

“If you are so keen to watch, maybe you should also decide to come out and play.”

His Excellency stands close enough that if he had a human breath, Lucheni could feel its cooling wind on his skin. Here, he can see every single eyelash, every little curl of hair, green as envy. 

“Death is not a game.” 

A stray finger, tapping on a hollow, heartless chest. “It very well could be. Perhaps if we all took Death a little bit more lightly, your woman would be more sparing with her kisses, too.” 

He bites down on his index finger, hard, unable to conceal a self-indulgent grin. Death is the most beautiful when angry and desperate, it makes misbehaving so delightful. 

So rewarding. He cannot remember a moment when he felt more comfortable than the times he could reduce even the most graceful and dignified into nothing more than a furious, pathetic mess. Hardly anything can hurt you if you are well aware that the whole world was created to be at your disposal and provide mindless fun and entertainment. 

When a rat only wants to provoke a reaction out of you, every drop of pain turns into pleasure, for he could see behind the thin veil you keep up as your masquerade. 

Say I love you, and it is over. One can pine for it, and pine for never getting it. 

The only beauty is in the unrequited, crooked, and cruel. 

**Rat Paws on the Parquet**

Footsteps follow in places where they cannot be heard. Their absence can be just as bewildering as the creaking of the hardwood floor deep in the night. Death moves about soundlessly, it is only the pain and grief that give it a voice, all the painful echoes of impermanence.

So few of us truly understand the beauty of knowing that all things are bound to end. So few of us await the last moments with genuine anticipation. Most men who want to die fail to see that it is not Death they seek, but a fork on the road. Pining for the end can only be genuine when you are restricted by the ropes of eternity that will never let you sleep. 

All of you. You don’t know what you are pining for. 

Rat paws run across the parquet all quiet and soft. She waits for something that is unlike all she experienced before, she pines for the freedom that belongs to none in the realm of the living. 

It is human nature to pine for all of that deceives us, for a promise of all that is gaudy, embellished with glitter and gold. In Death, people find the promise of a dream, but they forget that dreams in the underworld are just as whimsical, and they may spend an eternity trapped in a nightmare. 

Nightmare on Earth, a revenge fantasy. The rat cuddles itself into the lives of the unsuspecting. 

Maybe His Excellency knows just as well that love cuts deeper than any files. 

You watch those you love leave for someone else, equally rotten. The difference is but the sugar they coat their words in. 

In the vibrating air, where the curtain is drawn: Nothing goes according to plan, for one more time.


	2. Fighting Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like too much time has passed for me to successfully imitate my own writing style from months ago, but I always wanted to put the second half out, and Stella's comment (plus the quarantine) pushed me to do it. So, I hope you can still enjoy it! 
> 
> This was meant to read like a fever dream, just as the chapter from before, so I also hope that comes across.

**Fighting Chance**

On all accounts, if one is a bad man, he shall keep to his wicked ways, without giving in to the temptation of explaining himself. Those who feel the need to explain their actions seek understanding. And those who seek understanding have a secret longing to be accepted, to be allowed back into a place they l have long forsaken.

If one is a bad man, he shall know no remorse, seek no retribution, and take no step back. When they are betrayed, they shall craft their magnificent revenge, greater than any injury they suffered. No rules are easier than the one he goes by, yet so many hesitate to embrace the inhumanity in man. Like denying a part of their being would make them superior. 

People do not often think about what makes frightening truly Frightening, because they look away from what makes them fret. They look away and look for something uncontrollable to blame. It is much easier to hide in the darkest pits of one’s mind, to create phantasmagoric, far-fetched fantasies of something foreign.

Oh, he knows about that.

His Excellency relies on the exoticism of his character created by all of those who call themselves ordinary, the lifelessness in his eyes, and the lack of air in his lungs. All that separates him from the real world becomes his shield, and he hides behind the veils of mystery. The unknown and the alien scares us as much as it fascinates us. That is why some yearn to die, although they do not yearn for being mercilessly butchered, sacrificed on some altar. 

Even the depths of hell could be a change of scene. His own personal retribution is the same story, repeated hours on end. What could be worse than knowing what is next? 

Give him a good torture any time, hands clasped around his neck and you shall have his praise and worship again until the last curtain falls and beyond even that. 

Rarely do ever people familiarize themselves with the dangers of the faceless and the ordinary. Behind the mask of your waiters and servant boys, unspeakable fantasies dwell, spiced with ambition and tact. He obeys until he does not. 

Facelessness takes you so much farther than notoriety. The pain inflicted is much more real than the pain inflicted by those who crawl back up from the Underworld to chase you, for you are left with the sorry thought that you could have prevented this yourself. Only a select few can fight Death, but take a faceless, nameless member of the public and suddenly everyone is left with the illusion that they ever had a fighting chance.

Your Excellency will beg to wear this face once. 

  
  


**Wedding in the Twilight**

He can hear the echoes of His Excellency’s cries resounding between the thick walls of the Augustinian Church, as he stands there mute, soundless, with a face of a chiselled marble statue. Motionless. Glorious. Unnoticed by the world, and yet, magnificently suffering. 

Attuned to pain and misery, it would be foolish to think Lucheni would miss such a wonderful melody. And gloat. 

“Nothing goes smoothly, according to plan,” he murmurs into his hat as His Excellency sulks with a motionless face: believing he can fool the man who has spent many a lifetime by his feet. 

He always mourns. He always hopes. He never changes. 

“The Habsburgs are next on schedule. Not you, not me. Nothing goes smoothly according to  _ your  _ plan.” 

He bows down. “But it is all for you. Everything I do.” 

Nobody would be inclined to revenge if their whole world did not revolve around the target of it. Revenge is the most passionate confession of love. It is meant to leave an impression that would last a lifetime.

Some confess their love, yearning for a favourable answer. Those who seek revenge have no need for useless reciprocation anymore. Leaving all their hopes behind, they want to teach a final lesson. Even more: Go down in history. What could sully his bad name? Doing it for love? Only as bad as history allows him to be, he always said. 

When His Excellency puts his curse forward he does not realize the grand irony behind his words. In the evening sky, the moon glows orange. Everything but pale: the sun still shines long after it has set. 

Her eyes only pick up the ordinary world, and yet as she passes by, pulling along the white train of her heavy dress, concealed behind soft veils, for a moment she sees beyond. She doesn’t smile, only stares, for a mere second. 

The thick walls of the Augustinian Church reverberate her agreement to her cursed existence. But nothing you agree to may be called a curse anymore. They are merely vows. 

His Excellency is always premature. It is only hubris that keeps us from victory, convincing us that we’ve already done everything we could. 

If you are in the hands of a skilled puppeteer, he will never put you down for a second. Every idle moment is a chance to escape. 

**The Love of the Glass Skinned**

But it is not only His Excellency who is rash. The Emperor leaves her bedchamber too early, too silently, and too kindly. Kindness is an act that is the easiest to feign and the hardest to maintain. With kindness, always comes an ulterior motive, as people put an undisclosed price on it. You never know when they will force you to pay back. 

Once the soft footsteps disappear, he knocks on the door then latches it behind himself after he passes through. The bedroom is darkened, and yet, he sees everything. 

Elisabeth gasps, then soon recognizes the man who stands by the door. Should he say an old friend, perhaps? “Mister! I thought it was His Imperial Majesty who came back.”

“Would you be frightened?” 

As he sits down on the side of her bed, her words echo an earlier line. Reprises write themselves into the new storyline. “No? Inconvenienced.” 

“Trust me, he is the only one who is inconvenienced now.” 

She shrugs, with the effortless grace girls who defy both Death and fate shrug. Wayward, but playful. Clueless and all-knowing. She tangles and un-tangles a lock of her hair with her finger, regarding Lucheni in the vibrating darkness around them. 

“I thought I would not see you again. Then, you appeared at the church this evening, and I knew you’d come. I saw you in the crowd.” Her face straightens out. “But you do not work for the imperial family, do you?”

“I indeed serve another lord.” 

Another shrug, as if that answered any questions. Her shoulders peek out from under her nightgown, the palest in the room. She is paler even than the moon. Elisabeth edges closer to him on the bed. 

“But that does not matter. You are not here to discuss trivial matters such as that now.” Some ideas carry on within us without any need to rekindle the fire of understanding from the outside. She bites her lower lip. “You are here for the rehearsal, mister.”

“A wedding night is hardly something one should be rehearsing.” 

Her skinny arms pull him into an embrace already, recalling their kiss from Bad Ischl: soft, forbidden, and curious. In the corner of the room, dwelling in the darkness, he can see a figure suffocating on wrath and betrayal. He does not protest any longer, because bad men would rarely protest too fervently when they thought their revenge fantasy was at peril. 

Her pale, glass skin is almost transparent against his. “I cannot promise to be anything like His Imperial Majesty.” 

“What difference can there be?” she simply says, unaware.

The love of the glass skinned is much like the rays of the sun. Sunlight feeds the weed and flowers all the same. Her love does not ask for your intentions before letting them grow and grow and take over, mercilessly grabbing the narrative by the corners and flipping it inside out. 

Pleasure, is certainly the black eyes of Death, burning a hole into the back of his head, as he reaffirms once more that safety is nothing more but a mere illusion. 

Pleasure, is certainly the way jealousy bubbles like the surface of boiling water: pathetic and helpless, out of control. 

Drunk on his revenge fantasy, he does not let her sleep until the early hours of the morning come, tainting the sky grey. And when he finally does, her fingers rest on his chest, playing around as if one would carefully sound a piano. Human affection is as much of a mystery to him as it is to His Excellency, as he explores the depths of intimacy one oblivious human can have for the undead. Falling into a deep slumber, Elisabeth clings to him, delightfully unaware of the ironies of fate and free will. 

He only disappears at five, when Sophie barges in with her entourage. 

  
  


**The Wrath of the Glass Skinned**

His Excellency welcomes betrayal just as any human would. In times of despair, there is hardly any difference between the mundane and the divine. 

“You said you only existed for me.” 

“I did not say I existed for your mighty love, however.” He throws his head back. “What? Are you perhaps jealous that I did not have to ask for something you’ve been begging for in vain?” 

Because all of humanity is frightened by his figure, Death came to think of itself as cruel. But Death is only natural. Only humans can create, cultivate, and bend things into unnatural foulness, frowned upon by the world one can see with their bare eyes and the world beyond that, too. Death may be raw, but he can never deny his purpose. Only human can truncate even the most beautiful and applaud himself for the damage he has made. 

“You were not supposed to do that.” 

Well, he was not supposed to be refused entry to hell either, and yet here they were, reliving the same two hours between two curtains because he had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to be. How can anyone blame him for having a fantasy? 

His Excellency looms closer, like the darkness itself. His skin is hollow and cold like glass, yet his shadow is always dark and heavy. Lucheni feels like he is suffocating under it, and that brings a smile on his face. The joy of being attracted to the macabre. 

“What will you do?” he asks, in a fit of laughter. “Choke me?” 

His Excellency takes one last step and only stops when their chests would press together. He raises no hand on him, only watches with his snake eyes that try to deny all heartbreak and betrayal. 

“Trust me, I’ve tried,” Lucheni continues. “But be my guest.”

His undead, albeit sun-kissed hand grabs Death’s, inviting it around his throat. He is met with nothing but resistance. 

Lucheni laughs. But of course.

“Maybe you are scared that even you can’t kill me, and you created a monster to exist between this world and the other, ruining your  _ grande amor _ e.” 

“Or maybe I know that all you are looking for is punishment. What use is torture when you are asking for it?” 

“Then why do you kiss anyone else who begs to die?” 

In a world where he gets the payment for his good service, none of them would need to play this game. 

“Because they are deserving of it.” 

He vanishes behind thick, jasmine-scented smoke.

**The Early Years**

In their first year of marriage, His Imperial Majesty is incredibly busy. So busy, he leaves his young wife to her own devices. Normally, watching things deteriorate into a joyful mix of animosity and tedium is entertainment enough. But this time, he partakes. 

He sneaks into her chamber night after night - pretending that there is a chance anyone could notice him at all -, and calls on the wrath and envy of the Inevitable. 

Lucheni was never one for love stories, however, a revenge tragedy could move him in every he could think of. As the nights keep passing he feels closer and closer to the breaking point. He could have died a martyr and admitted into hell, but His Excellency chose to fight instead.

In the second year, a daughter is born to Elisabeth. With black eyes, deep and round like the night, sparkling like moonbeams. Sophie confiscates her. His Excellency is doubtful. 

“Do you think? That her eyes are too black, and her skin is not pale enough?” Lucheni asks, with laughter coming deep from his belly. “Or do you know? Can the undead produce a child? Have you ever tried?”

In the bleach-coloured evening, His Excellency takes a threatening step ahead. “You and I are nothing alike.” 

Clearly. Then why is it so that both of them are stepping to the same beat, following the same lines, and pre-occupy themselves with the same illusions of the same love that will never be reciprocated?

He was beckoned by the Inevitable, to come out and play. Or, did he invent the Inevitable to justify the game?

His fingers curl around a pale wrist, inviting him closer, around his throat again. “Just do it once, and that mighty love shall be all yours to take.”

Lucheni is rejected, once again. 

Is it only bad men, who take rejection and use it to fire up their passion? “No” is a beautiful word because it translates to “conquer me.” And in one of these powder-scented nights, he will fulfil his revenge. He helped him towards the grand finale with kisses, tears, promises so many times he lost count, and yet, he is still a beggar, looking to die.  


In the third year of their marriage, another girl is born, but she has no moonbeams in her eyes and she breathes no darkness into her lungs. 

**Puppeteer **

She never asks for his name. Perhaps she wants to have some deniability, or perhaps she knows that the answer would not come anyway. For as long as they were in their secret world, they needed no names, only hunger and thirst. "Mister" is just as good as anything else.  


Seconds turn backwards. When nobody else can, he watches her in the early mornings, dressing up, staring into her mirror, and her reflection staring back at her, challenging and distant.  


At times he would step behind her, a kiss on the neck, only as long as His Excellency could watch and blush green with envy. 

“You could win all of their hearts,” he would whisper. “What you see in the mirror now can be your greatest asset.”

Her hair is so long that even when curled, it reaches below her hips. It reminds Lucheni of another set of locks, pale and fragrant of sandalwood. One would think Death smells like rot. And perhaps it does: to those who are not attracted to the idea of leaving everything behind retiring into an endless slumber. 

Thinking about the Inevitable, he leans closer to her, their cheeks almost touching. “What is it that you want the most?”

The answer comes without a moment of hesitation. “Freedom.” 

“Think about how this beauty can give you all that. Everything you need in order to get what you truly want in life is inside of you already.”

She is not that girl anymore who will playfully exchange kisses with him and giggle all the way. Elisabeth has always been prone to melancholy thought, and with only one ally, who hid in the shadows of her bedchamber, in the palace, she slowly suffocated to Death like an Italian anarchist, suspended on his own leather belt in a solitary cell. 

The novelty wears off, but she is still the smart girl he once knew, growing beautiful flowers of the seeds one plants in her head. As anyone who lacks supporters around her, she is eager to keep him. He poses no immediate challenge. He should mean no threat. Apart from the looming, tragic scenario where they end up getting caught. 

“At times I believe that nothing can ease suffering in this world. Only Death.” 

Such a statement, he can agree with. There is a reason why not being granted release leaves him with so much pent-up anger. She is right. Ultimately, the only thing that matters in this world is Death. But as long as these veils are open, His Excellency shall not win. 

“Forget Death for now. We all have one asset that can grant us release from any situation, we just need to find the right way.” 

Instead of looking at herself, her gaze flicks towards Lucheni’s face, observing him as she asks. “What is yours, mister?”

Like a good puppeteer, he answers. “I will always have my stories to come to my rescue.” 

Before the year ends, His Excellency claims the child back, who was breathing darkness into her lungs and had moonbeams in her eyes. 

  
  


**Curtain Two: A Door to the Other World**

His Excellency gloats, for he believes he found a punishment to fit the crime. Worldly attachments are attributed to those who resemble anything human. 

Dead children will not move him. Not with the backdrop of his revenge fantasy. He was not even born yet, how could he sire a child? Mistakes of the narrative will one way, or another, be eliminated. His presence is the anomaly itself. 

The torture, of course, falls on Elisabeth instead, being punished for something she chose under the illusion of operating on free will. We are liars to be free. 

Then, the imperial couple leaves for Hungary and soft rat paws follow them on every corner. Death has never been an ally to him - and now the rat is no ally to Death anymore, either. 

“Fame will get in your head if you believe you are the leading role in this farce,” he susurrates, with the wind rustling the tree leaves around them. Windchimes. “The leading role is, ultimately, hers.” 

“Is that true? Or is it just that you can only crawl around in the shadows, without any power to speak of at all? After all, you will always need someone to do your dirty job for you.” 

Is he the right hand of the Inevitable that moves history forward? Or is the Inevitable just a cast of his own self, stripped from its humanity, distilled as divine and inaccessible? Is Death an illusion we created to give us a conclusion, when there isn’t any waiting for us? 

To give us hope, that once the second act is over, we may finally find rest under the weeping willow. 

On Hungarian soil for another time, although he lost count already, but this time he cannot fade into the background. Eyes find him, as they see beyond for another moment. 

Beauty, although fleeting as it is, can really arrest even the Inevitable for a moment longer than man would expect. Those who call on the name vanity do so because they fear the power of beauty, and know of no other words to defeat it. 

He gives that power in her hand. She shall not have anything for herself. She shall not claim ownership on anything - as long as he is the one telling the tale. It has stopped being an act of revenge on her many a replay ago, but this is exactly what she deserves. Who else would be better equipped to deliver her punishment? Every single character in this story deserves what is coming for them. Sorrow, and suffering. No sympathy for any of them.  


Every time he conjures this story from within his very head, he gets to know Elisabeth intimately, but she always looks past him. He would follow her on her journey, snap pictures of her in passing, serve at restaurants faceless, and she’d always cover her face with her fan. Hiding from people, and keeping their faces obscure too. She would never look straight at him: he does not exist, beyond his role. 

Lucheni, ultimately, should mean nothing more to her than the door through which she will step into the underworld. One fateful meeting, perhaps shorter than a second. Every door is only a simple tool.  


Today, they play. Today, she sees him.

Today, he is the only one she may see. 

**Moonbeams in His Eyes**

But he is not done yet. Before long, another child is born with moonbeams in his eyes. Those are always born for a tragedy. Pale, glass-skinned like his mother, round, and dark-eyed like the anomaly that created him.

And like those, born for a great tragedy, he is cast away and condemned for a life-long of solitude, only to be comforted by phantasmagories of the Inevitable. 

In the story he tells from night to night, Rudolf always used to be the scapegoat. The signifier of Elisabeth’s sins as a mother, and the tragedy to seduce herself towards the easy choice of Death, whose arms she could rest for an eternity. 

Tonight, Rudolf is still the scapegoat. But he is a distraction for His Excellency: young, on the better days even vivacious. The darkness he breathes into his lungs attracts all that is the opposite of life, beckon His Excellency onto a short interlude, a quick waltz between the two of them. 

At the times when the prey runs into our arms and begs to be killed for sport, we find that hunting is a disgusting pastime, after all. Despair makes desire wither, then disgust takes over. 

The world makes so much sense when we are outside of it, that even the worst of us forget that the rules still apply. Lucheni once wanted stardom, martyrdom, Death and eternal sleep, and barely got even the first box checked. Climbing to stardom on a royal’s back did not seem like such a steep hill when he first thought of it. When he first thought of it, he was a different man. 

Death, and the lack of it, changes us all. 

In order to save herself, she leaves the boys with moonbeams in their eyes behind and embarks on a never-ending journey. No goodbyes are needed, for he knows this is how the story always goes. 

**Mighty Love**

No travel diaries, no verse on the road may depict the solitude of an endless journey perfectly. All those who entrust their hearts to the waterways, train carriages, and their feet that carry them from one destination to another, know that it is not the adventure they are really pining for. 

Stubborn ones would think that once challenged, they could emerge victorious over fate. With the solitude of endless lifetimes weighing down on their shoulders, pining for a place they could finally settle, they stand up and say: I forge my destiny, I am the master of my solitude. 

They do not know that even if they embrace their solitude with open arms, and forge their own lonely ways, they do nothing more than to dance to the melody fate plays. The only difference between the child with the moonbeams in his eyes, who desperately begs for affection to find him, and his mother who distances herself from others before others could distance themselves from her is pride. 

She sees him in a hotel down in the Mediterranean. He wears the humble uniform of a waiter, and her eyes glisten in recognition. Like strangers, they say nothing. Say nothing, and know all the secrets to the world.  


But Elisabeth knows someone would knock on the door to her room at night. The door opens with a creak, and reveals the surprised, albeit happy eyes of the girl-child she once used to be. It’s been years. Long years.

“Mister! I would ask how you’d be here of all places in the world, but the answer would not matter.”

Her hair is undone and tangled, as she is held in the arms of her greatest enemy. In the corner of the room, another glass-skinned creature appears, hungry for affection he believes he is owed. It is part of the fantasy. But we are not owed anything, ever. We create circumstances where people beg to give everything to us.  


“How can you look the exact same way you did when I first met you? Do you escape Death?”

He inhales sharply, between amused and inconvenienced. “I would say, Death escapes me.” 

“That must be a lonely world, you live in.”

He nudges her. “Isn’t yours?”

“This world is lonely, but I know that someone is waiting for me at the end of it, whenever I end up arriving there. But if it keeps repeating, on and on, like an endless circle… Would you not call life without Death meaningless?” 

Whether she believes him or not, is a different question. But for someone who has had multiple encounters with the Inevitable and left victorious, perhaps such things cannot sound far-fetched and unreal. Their reality is a layer above what ordinary people see, where the shadows have eyes, spying eyes that would never leave them alone.

Their reality is one layer above the truth, a fever-dream, conjured up through an unfulfilled, mighty love. Whose love is it? 

The only love he has ever known was Elisabeth’s. And it is not the love she felt for the looming Inevitable, beckoning her into submission at every instance life would make her trip and fall. Although, he saw that too. Everything was accessible to him, through all the veils he had crawled through to arrive here. 

“Are you here to beckon me home?” she asks. Her skin is still pale against his. 

“Where’s home?” But the answer never comes. 

Days after their meeting, she decides to visit home - and His Excellency decides to take the boy with the moonbeams in his eyes away from her. 

**Cheap to Make, Easy to Burn**

Time runs out, finally reclaiming the stolen moments. There is nothing left of the story to retell. Ultimately, when he looks back on the ways his story has been weaved, nothing has changed. No matter what road they take, their final destination will always be the same. 

His Excellency gloats, but he also shakes in fear. The duality never fades: The confidence of a powerful unearthly creature that never ceases to exist, and the doubts of a human soul, small and deprived of self-confidence. 

Their world is a papier-mâché. Cheap to make, easy to burn. Like all you want to easily move on set, there for the show, and hollow on the inside. 

“Was it worth it?” His Excellency asks. “You lost a child. And the game.”

“I did not care for him.” As much as he did not care for him in any of the previous times either. The circumstances change nothing. “I had her, before you. She will not wait for you with open arms. This game was never for you to win. You don't even know what for, but revenge is mine.” 

His Excellency gives him a pale smile, his teeth showing. 

“Is it, now? One cannot love Death before they love the way they die.”

His fingers run to his throat, where they were always invited to play before. The faintest marks, reminiscing of a leather belt around his neck, squeezing the darkness out of his lungs.

“Did you?” 

Lucheni’s throat closes, but it is not the long, icy fingers choking him. They are simply there, as decoration, cold and motionless. He shakes his head. No. He was supposed to die a martyr, but he did not have the range. Can he even say he died at all? Trapped in the same nightmare. Present, and yet gone.  


“I deserved more,” he whispers. “I deserved to leave with a show.” 

“Like the one you put on every night, tugging at heartstrings, hoping one would give you the result you hoped for?” 

His Excellency leans closer to him, until he can feel icy cold lips against his, barely, but brushing together. It has never been closer, yet out of reach.

“But I have one last task for you,” he whispers. “As always. It was indeed all for me, after all.” 

Eighteen-ninety-eight. The tenth of September. 

“Are you me, or am I you? Which one cannot ever impress the other?”

His purpose, in this tale, has come again. 

**Revenge Fantasy**

Eighteen-ninety-eight. The tenth of September. The tale has circled back to this moment again. Where they always begin, and where they always end. 

Nothing has changed, but his Revenge Fantasy is all set. Tonight, Elisabeth is not murdered by a stranger. Is it revenge on her? Is it revenge on His Excellency? Is it on himself? He has long forgotten where it all began. Who wanted to pull these strings, and why. 

Break the rules, and tell a story. What comes for you in the end, is for your audience to decide on. 

It is a unusually sunny day. Just like during those thousands and thousands of curtains that preceded this one. Out of habit, he finds out about Elisabeth’s visit in a newspaper.

Out of habit, he appears on the pier. 

When their eyes meet, for a moment, she sees beyond. They haven’t seen each other for the longest time. And yet, he still looks the way they first saw each other. If they had a chance to exchange words, she would say something about that.

But Elisabeth only smiles. 

He walks against her, they meet halfway. But only she will be spending the rest of eternity with His Excellency now. Even if there’s recognition in her eyes, even if he stole her for one evening, for one life, has the grand revenge fantasy been fulfilled for now? 

She smiles, even when she recognizes what is happening. No fighting against that whose face she so intimately knows. 

For the rest, everything is the same. No revenge fantasy felt so dull, so fruitless, so unchanged by the end of it. He laughs, laughing away that one mighty love that kept escaping him and that still escapes him until the end. 

But when it is all over, only silence follows. The red, heavy veils he used to so intimately know are not being pulled apart for an encore. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was sitting on this one for a while now, since it was supposed to be longer to begin with. But I am hoping to have the time to write the second part once in the future when my time & motivation come back from war.


End file.
